Current Museum Exhibition

The exhibition displays men’s and women’s clothing from 1780 to 1825 in a dozen period rooms throughout the museum. It considers how Americans fashioned a new identity through costume; on the one hand, Americans sought to be free from Europe, yet they still relied heavily on European manufacturing and materials.

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A Link to the Past

In the 19th century, meat preservation was a serious business, though quite messy and time-consuming. A family usually made sausage at the same time it butchered a hog. Pork was ground and mixed with several spices as a means of preservation. A sausage stuffer was then used to force the ground meat into a casing, which was usually made from hog intestines.

The DAR Museum’s large, cumbersome sausage stuffer consists of wood and tin. The casing would fit over the funnel-like structure, then the handle would be raised and lowered to push the meat into the casing. This mid-to-late 19th-century example was used by Rebecca Hendrickson Conover (1805–1892) of New Jersey. Today’s stainless-steel sausage makers weigh only three pounds, a vast improvement over this 25-pound example.

Current Museum Exhibition

The exhibition displays men’s and women’s clothing from 1780 to 1825 in a dozen period rooms throughout the museum. It considers how Americans fashioned a new identity through costume; on the one hand, Americans sought to be free from Europe, yet they still relied heavily on European manufacturing and materials.

Featured Object

Boston Uncommon

The acclaimed artist John Singleton Copley (1738–1815) was a teenager when he painted this portrait of Colonel Thomas Marshall of Boston around 1755. Copley was the portraitist of choice for Boston’s...More

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